


Hunting Smiles

by Wasuremono



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Worldbuilding, consensual murder, non-permanent death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 13:11:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8981137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/pseuds/Wasuremono
Summary: In a city where death is rarely permanent, being murdered has its attractions to a certain sort of enthusiast -- and you are an enthusiast of London's finest lunatic murderer. But can every Jack measure up?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [100indecisions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/100indecisions/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! Have a story about people whose hobby is being murdered. It's the season of giving, after all.
> 
> Seriously, though, I hope you enjoy this. Jack-of-Smiles is one of my favorite weird bits of Fallen London lore, especially the strange way in which he exists as a social phenomenon as well as just a supernatural criminal, so I tried to explore that here. Hope it works for you!

Five days after Jack-of-Smiles, you wake up in one of the Concord Square morgues: the one they call the "Waiting Room," for murder victims classified likely to recover. By now, you're quite familiar with the dark, faintly moist-looking ceiling and the paired feeling of the stone slab underneath you and the coarse sheet above. The Constables are, much to your regret, not particularly focused on their incapacitated guests' comfort.

One of the morgue attendants, the foppish one who wears two layers of aprons, is patrolling your row, and he cringes as you sit up. "Miss... Beverly, is it? You weren't expected up for another day." They underestimate you, as usual. You've always been a sturdy sort, and on top of that, quite good at chess. The boatman obliges you readily. "Let me retrieve your belongings. There are fresh clothes in the ladies' antechamber."

Fresh clothes are a formality, but you oblige him, changing from your blood-soaked tatters into one of the supplied Nankeen gowns, simple and dyed coal-black. There are parts of London where being seen coming home in a morgue guest's clothing is a scandal, but you make a point not to inhabit them. This will be your fourth morgue-gown, and it is your third earned by the hand of Jack-of-Smiles. 

You'd been following the reports carefully over the past few days, but arriving in Spite at the proper time was still largely a stroke of luck. It's easy enough to follow the screaming once you're near Jack, but what if he had chosen Veilgarden that day? You might have wasted a journey with nothing but some barely-adequate vegetables to show for it. Instead, you had the fortune of finding the finest Jack you've seen yet -- a dockworker with a fierce swing and an unhurried pace, even as the cries for Constables gained strength. He spared you a few moments, and the touch of his knife was exhilaration itself. You've never been so delighted as you were then, and you still feel it now, even after your days with the boatman.

The first time you were murdered was, in retrospect, rather a poor affair. It was a glorified accident, a Medusa's Head brawl and a young monster-hunter a bit too zealous with his blackjack; you were back in two days, with only a taste of what you were told lay beyond the last taboo. You might have given up and resigned yourself to an uninterrupted life had you not had the fortune to meet the Overeducated Curate and learn about his particular avocation. 

The hunting of Jack-of-Smiles is not a casual pursuit. There are maps and charts to cross-reference with the newspapers, scurrilous reports to weed away, and, of course, a certain element of luck. Nonetheless, for one of a certain dedication, it is a glorious sport. You took to it immediately. 

A knock on the door of the antechamber tells you that your possessions are ready. You step outside and collect your satchel from the foppish attendant, who scowls at you. "Miss Beverly. Do attempt not to return."

"I suspect I will disappoint you, sir," you say, and your smile is impossible to repress.

* * *

St. Philip's Club occupies an unremarkable address on Kidderghast Street, and it enjoys an unremarkable reputation to match: one of London's many dreary, faintly Morelways-smelling social clubs of little interest to anyone beyond eternal social aspirants and terminal bores. St. Philip's is happy to pose as this sort of house of forlorn hopes, for its clientele is wholly unconcerned with reputation -- or is happy to hide behind the club's rather shabby, ordinary facade. There are, of course, rather worse ways to be regarded than as shabby and ordinary. 

The doorman recognizes you, of course, and you step inside to find the club comfortably populated. A few regulars are conspicuously absent, not yet returned or perhaps un-returning, but many familiar faces are drinking and discussing the latest developments. One of the faces you recognize from the crowd in Spite is cheerfully recounting his particular encounter to a rapt audience, seasoned member and recent arrivals alike. It would be a touch rude to interrupt, but you're quite sure he'll tell the story again at your mutual leisure. Members of St. Philip's Club are rarely hesitant to share their stories of meetings with Jack-of-Smiles. This is, after all, an enthusiast's establishment.

"Smilers," as is the derisive nickname for your particular cadre of death enthusiasts, are derided by your fellows for what they believe to be foolhardiness. After all, there is no death in Fallen London, save perhaps for the fool's errand of drowning, more likely to claim its victims permanently. The common rabble of thug-botherers and window-jumpers inevitably fail to grasp that such is the entire point of the enterprise. The deaths favored by dabblers may hold some novelty, but an edge of _real_ danger must remain for long-lasting satisfaction. The benevolent attention of Jack-of-Smiles is the finest option for a discerning enthusiast, and every St. Philip's member lost to permanent death is soon replaced by two of the newly-enlightened, hungry for more. 

The Overeducated Curate is at his usual table, hard at work at some manuscript or another, but sitting near him is a man you do not recognize: blond and fine-featured, possibly of Scandinavian extraction, but certainly with the unwholesome-looking ruddiness you associate with one born on the Surface. The Curate cultivates these odd acquaintances for reasons you don't quite understand, although you suppose the bottle of Broken Giant on the table may have something to do with it. "Eugenia!" says the Curate, rising to his feet. (Your name is not Eugenia; it's a saint's name, you think, one of the Curate's recurring little jokes. You believe he's the one who named St. Philip's Club.) "You've returned! What fine timing you have. May I introduce you to my friend?"

The friend's name is indecipherably European, but the mention of "acting on behalf of the Constables" makes things quite clear. He's a different sort of Jack-of-Smiles hunter: the sort that Concord Square produces like clockwork, and the sort prone to career-ending discouragement not long later. "I would like to ask you a few questions," the hopeful Scandinavian Constable says. "About your experiences." 

This is hardly the first time you've answered questions for the Constables, and there may be a glass of rather outstanding wine in it for you, so you nod and take a seat. The questions that follow are quite routine. What did you see, and when did you see it? What was this particular Jack like? What was his mood? Did he happen to speak? (They always ask this, and you truly cannot discern why, since Jack is never talkative, at least not in a way with any substance behind it.) You've answered a dozen questions before one, at last, surprises you: "how did you decide on Spite and not Veilgarden, Miss Beverly? What was your intuition?"

He knows something about the process, then. Presumably the Curate has told him; perhaps they truly are friends. You glance towards the Curate, who offers a nod. "It's mostly intuition," you say. "Once you've been graced with a smile from Jack, there are things you begin to understand. But there is some method. We'd better bring the maps."

You and the Curate spend the better part of the evening with the maps, pointing out Jack's patterns to the Scandinavian Constable, who listens with the dedication of a desperate schoolboy. By all rights, you should not cooperate so readily with one hoping to end your games, but that's an amateur's thinking. Jack-of-Smiles is no clumsy yegg ripe for the Constables' picking, and if this one finds him, the encounter will no doubt end in defeat -- or in a new initiate to St. Philip's Club. Some might say that this Constable could be different, in the way that Surface-born so often are... but in that case, there is the new thrill of a hunt to spectate, perhaps even to be claimed by. To be a Jack-of-Smiles hunter is to relish uncertainty, nurture it, to be gleefully anticipatory of the worst. 

You leave St. Philip's Club that night in a warm and charitable mood. You'll have to hear the fresh encounter stories, and tell your own, on your next visit, but you sense something quite delicious is afoot with the Scandinavian Constable. Perhaps you'll have the good fortune to see how this particular battle plays out.

* * *

It all bubbles over in Veilgarden, because it would, wouldn't it? Jack-hunting in Veilgarden is a touch more complicated, on account of the honey-mazed lunatics and their remarkable tendency to happen upon knives, but a seasoned enthusiast will develop a sense for picking Jack out of a crowd of ordinary armed madmen. The fact that you catch a glimpse of blond hair and a delicate cheekbone only makes it more simple yet.

The Scandinavian Constable is Jack-ridden, swinging and slicing at the fleeing crowd with a heavy fish-gutting knife, presumably plucked from the kitchen of some unlucky local restaurant. As you carefully step around the edge of the crowd for a better look, you notice a touch of hesitance in his bladework and a tendency towards frantic glances. He's fighting back against Jack, if quite fruitlessly. Disappointing, you think, and bad sport besides. If you are one day blessed with Jack's presence within your body, you have told yourself you will be a useful and efficient vessel for his work. 

If any other Jack were quite this shoddy, you'd abandon the hunt out of simple self-respect, but for the Scandinavian Constable, you will make an exception. Perhaps he will be goaded? Most Constables that advance to the rank of Jack-botherers have a bit more skill with a shiv than this, so perhaps he just needs a bit of encouragement. You shove to the front of the crowd, and you grin. "Oi! Surfacer! Give us a smile, why don't you? Or are you Jack-of-Frowns, having to ride in this whelp?"

The Jack-ridden Constable makes a wretched gurgling noise in the back of his throat, and his face wavers between terror and fury. You see the knife coming for your throat, but you don't dodge it, and it catches you under your jaw just below your left ear -- and none too deeply. It skids over and scrapes at the tougher flesh of your inner throat, rather than the deep slice of the Spite Jack, and already you can tell that this one's two days on the river at the most, if you can even manage to die of this. A thorough disappointment, this one. 

You stumble away, bleeding, pressing the usual futile handkerchief to your throat -- a part of the ritual that keeps the rush of dying flowing through you longer. Bloody Hell, this one isn't more than a glorified scratch, is it? You'd hoped for more from this Constable. As you slump against the alley wall, you will your blood to flow in proper homage to Jack, but your body is unwilling to comply this time. You give it an hour or two, long after the panic in the streets has abated and the proper Constables have cleaned up the bodies for transport to the Waiting Room, and then you climb to your feet again.

There's a doctor in Watchmaker's Hill, not a death enthusiast herself, who nonetheless has a sympathetic view on the enterprise; many of her patients are Knife and Candle casualties, but she's been known to assist St. Philip's Club members injured in Jack-panics or otherwise non-fatally wounded by their hunts. You bring her address to mind and begin your walk, hardly bloody enough to merit mention among the Veilgarden revelers. This one's not going to be much of a story for the Club, on its own, but perhaps you can make something more of it. After all, every hunter needs a story of the one that got away.


End file.
